MOSCOW, January 15. /TASS/. The outgoing US administration may take further steps to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from resuming cybersecurity dialogue with Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Friday.

"We don’t rule out that the outgoing administration will continue its game, including attempts to create additional obstacles to prevent the incoming administration and the president-elect from taking steps to resume substantive dialogue on global information security with our country," she pointed out.

According to Zakharova, Washington’s repeated allegations of cyberattacks involving hackers of Russian origin have become a routine practice. "The joint statement about hacking attacks that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued on behalf of President Trump, makes it clear that the outgoing US administration has decided to raise the stakes. It seems that by bringing the four agencies together to make a statement based on slander against Russia, the US president seeks to cover his back in the face of Democrats’ threat of impeachment," the Russian diplomat noted.

In this regard, she mentioned the initiatives aimed at resuming effective cooperation in the cybersecurity field that the Russian president had put forward in September 2020.

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in late December that hackers had compromised US federal agencies and critical infrastructure. US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, in turn, claimed that "it was the Russians that engaged in this activity."